Getting it right: winter blends

Getting your ration right going into the winter is vital in maintaining animal productivity, health and fertility while also looking after farm profitability, explains ForFarmers’ Libby Bird, Blends Manager (South) and Huw Richard Jones, Blends Manager (North).

“When the cows come back inside it can be easy to just feed the same blend formulation as you did in previous years. But you can experience drops in yields and animal performance as the blend isn’t correctly balanced with this year’s forages,” Libby says.

“The weather has been very hit and miss this year. We have had some really warm dry spells but also many wet, cold and grey days, leading to an array of forage qualities across farms. It is important to analyse them and reassess rations prior to cows coming in for the winter.

“Once forages are analysed, the ForFarmers blends team, along with your local ruminant specialist, can look at the benefits of reformulating your blend to make sure it balances on-farm feeds and also stacks up financially utilising pre-contracted volumes.

“ForFarmers can also advise on alternatives using our knowledge of the latest raw material markets. We can look at reducing a blends’ carbon footprint by using alternative ingredients such as RapePlus in place of soya. Lintec is also an option with its many benefits such as reduced methane emissions and improved cow fertility.

Changing market

“Raw materials which were good buys for last winter may not be for this upcoming winter. Having had the volatile price spikes following the beginning of the Ukraine war, prices in the raw material market have settled, enabling some customers to improve the quality of their blend for this upcoming winter.

“For example, this year we can reduce ingredients such as urea, which were included last year as a better cost alternative to add protein into a ration and incorporate alternative protein sources such as distillers and rapemeal,” says Libby.

Lock in savings

Relooking at diets and blends now while the raw material markets have eased means there are opportunities to lock into savings.

Rising feed costs on-farm over the past couple of years have seen some farmers, feeding more blends at the feed barrier and reduced quantity of feed fed through the parlour if they are able. Using blends over straights could reduce on farm stock losses of up to 10%.

“Not only are there cost savings in this, but blends also allow more flexibility as blend formulations can be tailored and tweaked throughout the feeding period as farms move through clamps and cows transition from fresh calving through to later in the lactation,” says Libby.

Removing soya

Milk buyers continue to push forward with incentives to improve carbon footprints, and in some cases are changing their standards to remove or reduce soya and palm products being fed by their producer.

“Talk to us about what this might mean to your herd and what alternatives are available,” says Huw. “Every farm and its cows are different. The strategy we might use for a herd with an average yield of 6,000 litres is very different to the one we will use for a herd with a 14,000 litres average yield. It’s important to understand what your milk buyer is asking and how that might impact your herd. Feed efficiency is the number one driver of sustainability in the dairy herd so your journey to reduce your environmental impact needs to take this into account.

“Having the right blend for different groups of cows, and so feeding for the different stages of lactation will also help with efficiency and sustainability,” Huw adds. “Flexibilities of blend formulations is an added benefit which helps farms create a range of diets in the mixer wagon for different groups of stock and can also have a positive impact on their bottom line.

“Whatever you decide to do, think about your cows’ diet as a bottom-up ration. Start with your forage and have that analysed so when you’re adding a new forage to the diet be that moving from first to second cut or adding in wholecrop or maize, you know what you’re building on. Balance this with an out-of-parlour blend which compliments the forages and helps drive rumen health and production. And the parlour cake is the icing on the top that complements both,” Huw concludes.